Turned with me to Proverbs, chapter 30, we'll be looking at the sixth of seven numerical probes by this wise man of old-named augur. He uses in his Proverbs, as Solomon does in different places in his Proverbs, he uses the world of nature, the animal world to teach us lessons about ourselves and about God. That shouldn't surprise us. That's probably a practice of ancient times on to today. I know when I was a child, my mother used to read to us from a famous book called Asalves Fables. There were stories of animals and I had a little moral to them. Bill Gofford, a Christian minister who years ago had very popular conferences, had a series of three large portfolio books called Character Sketches and each one of these biblical characteristics of divine and holy people he would illustrate from the laws of nature, from the animal world. Seneca, the old Roman-centered philosopher, said it is a shame not to learn morals from the little animals. They do have the DNA of God in them. They reflect. As one says, through general revelation, the invisible attributes, the eternal power and the divine nature of God, their creators show there are lessons in the animal world that we can learn. And augur turns to four little wise creatures today and talks about them and what they have to teach us. He says in Proverbs chapter 30, beginning in verse 24. Four things on earth are small, but they are exceedingly wise. One, the ants are people not strong if they provide their food in summer, two, the rock badges are of people not mighty, if they make their homes in the cliffs, three, the locus have no king, and all of them march and rank in four, the lizard you can take in your hands yet is in king's palaces. One commentator says four things on earth that are small, but smart. They are wise, he says, and wise in particular about work. This is a proverb that is unlike the other ones in the set, that doesn't seem to be a real deep riddle here, although there is a small one. It's not the fourth and final one that gives us the theme of the proverb, but in this case the first one, the ant. For all these four little creatures have in common work. And the wise way in which they go about their work. We could paraphrase this proverb saying, there are four little annals which seem too insignificant to notice, but each in his own way knows how to work to provide for itself and for the common good of all. We'll find that this paradigm reaches its climax, its crescendo, its main lesson in the fourth little animal called the lizard. It's interesting that when we talk about common grace that we would consider work to be a part of God's common grace, but it is. In fact, I'll tell you how important work is, it is the only thing that you have in common with every other person on the face of the earth. Not all people will marry and have children. Not all people will have an education like you, or will be your race, or your religion, or your ethnic background, that they won't obviously be from the same culture. In fact, the only thing we share in common with every other human being is that we exist. We have the life of God in us, and we work. Because that's the beginning of the story of men who have a life with God. In Genesis 1 and 2, they're made in God's image, male and female, and they are placed in the garden, quote, to work and to tend to it. Work is not a result of the curse. It's not a product of the fall. Work is what we share with God, and with other people, in improving the creation that God has made, and it came before people fell into sin, which means that in its very nature, it is part of that very good creation that still is worth our investment. Eugene Peterson in his book called Christ plays in 10,000 places says that wonder is a natural and spontaneous to us all. When we were children, we were in constant state of wonder. The world was new, tumbling in on us in a profusion, in the way we walked, in the things we tasted, in things we experienced and felt and saw. And then as we grew older, that wonder tended to wane and to go away. And nowhere he says, does life suck the wonder out of existence as it does at work? Because we're not paid at work to wonder, to meditate on things or to examine things or to sit there at a desk or at our machinery and to worship God for the mystery's work, we're paid to be competent, to know, to have skill, to get things done by hookah by crook, it's at result that matters. And that has a way, Peterson says, of sucking the wonder and therefore the joy and the sense of purpose out of much of our work. But here are four little creatures who do enjoy their work in life and have us look at them for four lessons. Lesson number one, the ant who is industrious. Number two, the badger who is wise and discreet. The third lesson are the locusts who are self-discipline and focused. And finally the lizard who does business, wisey and humbly. They all have these four lessons to teach us and I would say that if someone doesn't work hard, make good decisions with discretion, focus in a self-discipline manner upon the task he has with others and do his work wisely and with humility, then that person will not enjoy their work and will find work to be tedious at the least and soul-numbing at the worst. So let's look at these four little animals and draw some wisdom from them. The hard work of the ant, proverb number one, verse 24 and 25, four things on earth are small but they are exceedingly wise. The ants are a people not strong, yet they provide their food in summer. The ant shows himself elsewhere in proverb, Solomon points to him a couple times in his proverbs, and here they are likened to people who are the epitome of industry. They work hard during the summertime to provide their food at a time when food is scarce. What we learned from the ant colony is one of the most amazing wonders of the physical world. The world book in Cyclopedia says that some ants feed and care for others, especially the young. Other ants keep the nest clean and store away food. Others guard the entrance of the nest and act like army men or soldiers. Some ants plant and care for little mushroom gardens deep in their nest and others raise different insects from which they obtain food somewhat like sugar. They tend to the other insects carefully, much as farmers tend to their herds of cows. Several kinds of ants keep beetles as pets, certain other ants steal the young of other ants and take them home to be their servants or slaves. Ants are called social insects because it is their nature to live together in colonies. The ants of a colony never quarrel among themselves, but they fight fiercely to protect their homes and their young ones from any and all intruders. Amazing how much ants are organized like mankind. We all know the famous Asoap Fable about the grasshopper who like to play his fiddle and sing in dance all summer, and the ant who was working hard in the grasshopper said, oh, you're just to kill joy. There'll be plenty of food later on the ant said, better be wise than to be hungry. And sure enough, when winner came, the grasshopper was out in the cold starving to death, but the ants in the colony had all the food that they collected all summer. So the Asop says, then the grasshopper knew it is best to prepare for the days of necessity while you still can. Here's the story of a little creature who is industrious. There's some lessons in the ants. Their lifetime is much shorter than ours is perhaps one year, but they give a lesson to our life. That we must find out what our work is in our youth, the springtime of our life, we need to prepare for that work through education and training and experiences. Then in the summer of our years, when life is most fruitful in our young adulthood, we need to devote ourselves diligently to the work that we feel God has called us to do for him and for others. We need to close out well and complete our tasks prior to our retirement in the September of our years. And finally, when the winter comes and the hair turns white like snow, we come from our work and rest because we've earned it through a good and diligent performance. Jesus put it this way. We must work the works of him who sent us while it is still day. For night time is coming when no man can work. So here's one little lesson about being industrious. Finding out what you're to do along with other people and cooperatively working together to accomplish your life's purpose while you still have opportunity. Here's a second lesson, not from the ants, but from the rock badger. There's 26. The rock badgers are not a people that are mighty if they make their homes in the cliffs. We're not really sure what a rock badger is. The little word in Hebrew seems to point to several rodents. What we would call the kangaroo mouse or a little coney, a European rabbit, or perhaps what we would call a chipmunk or a groundhog or a badger. But the point is, this badger is likened to people. I want you to notice that in the first two problems. The ants are a people not strong. The rock badgers are a people not mighty. Well they're not people, but they're used as an illustration of people. And here the illustration is of someone who is very cautious in the way they live and work. The rock badger, he says, is not mighty. He's not a big, ferocious thing that could ward off snakes and eagles and coyotes and things that live in the wilderness where he does. But he makes his home in the rocks where they can't get him. He takes before all else precautions to build himself a safe place from which he can launch his life's work. The point is that this little coney or this rock badger lives in a hostile world. And that does not cause him to shrink back in fear and to become a hermit, but rather to build his life around a realization of the dangers that surround him and to make compensation for them. Life is difficult because life is dangerous. And every work has some danger and there is some risk entailed in every kind of labor. Robert Alden says, perhaps less than here is that we must improvise even under adverse or difficult circumstances to do what God has called us to do. Those risk-taking, knowing when to do that and when not, and sobriety that tempers visionary enthusiasm with reality, and facing things the way they are to void facing ruin later on. We all face opposition in our work. Most of the time that opposition comes from within or from other people around us who because of their spiritual condition or their spiritual opposition to who we are and what we believe would like to make our life difficult and even dangerous. But Paul says, to Timothy, now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor. Therefore if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honor. Set apart for the master, useful for every good work ready to please the Lord. So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace along with those who call upon the Lord with a pure heart. Paul is telling young Timothy that in his calling, his work to be a minister, his greatest opposition will not come from outside of him but from within. His own youthful passions and indiscretions, his worldliness, the weaknesses of his character and the pensions within his own soul for certain kind of fetishes and sins, and he has to guard against those things if he is to be useful for the master, equipped for every good work. The same is true for each one of us here, whether it's greed or lust or pride or aggression, there is something inside it that can ruin our life's work and turn the great gift of common grace employment into something that is not useful to the master but is dishonorable and even hurtful. I think we've all experienced this in the last few years with the financial meltdown in 2008 because people were ruled by a lack of discretion. They were inappropriately bold and aggressive. They ignored the checks and balances there. They did not realize the dangers in all of their buying and selling and mortgaging and financing and marketing things and it all came down on all of us around the world to cause us much distress because these people were not discreet. There's a third lesson and it's the focused work of the locust. The locust have no king, yet all of them march in rank. Unlike bees or ants, these locusts have no leader. In fact, we might call a place where ants live, a colony, and a place where bees do that work a hive. What do we call locust, a swarm? It's a great word for a defense for a football team. Maybe we've got to change our name to the buck-eye swarm, although we didn't swarm very well last night against Wisconsin, but it is a word that just talks about this massive amount of individuals coming and conversing on one place in one point in one time. The goal talks about the swarm of locust and his prophecy in chapter 2. He says, like warriors they charge, like soldiers they scale the wall, they march each one in his way, they do not slurve to the right or to the left from their path, straightforward they go. They do not jostle one another, each marches in his own path, they burst through the weapons and are not halted, they leap upon the city, they run over the walls, they climb into houses, they enter through the windows like a thief, they cannot be stopped until all before them is devastation. I've never thankfully seen a swarm of locusts, but I'm told that there are so many that they blacken the sky and when they're done, the earth is parched, it is stripped of everything edible that was in their path and that they keep marching until every one of them dies. Here is an exhortation to be focused. To be focused and to be of like mind. The little locust who's nothing but a six-legged, form-wing grasshopper is absolutely harmless. You can hold him in your hand but put him in swarms of billions and he's a force to be reckoned with. Why? Because God has programmed with him, inside him, a focus on what he's going to do and a unity of purpose in that swarm. Brothers and sisters, when any group of people, whether it's a family or a church or a culture a nation, forgets their primary purpose, why they are who they are, and the unity that they need to accomplish that person, then everything falls apart. That is what's wrong with America. You can blame the Democrats and the Republicans in Washington, DC, but to do so, I must say you're wrong. They are but a symptom of what's wrong, they are not the cause of it. In our country today, we have lost focus upon what it means to be an American and what is the American dream that we all started out to pursue. And we have an incredible lack of unity because we become a nation of individuals each pursuing their own way. There's a book in the Bible that talks about that, it's called Judges, when each man did what was right in his own eyes and everything fell apart. So here's an exhortation for people to know what their purpose is and to share that in unity with others in order to accomplish their work. And finally, the humble work of the lizard. The lizard you can take in your hand, yet it is in King's palaces. This is the little word in Greek psalmist. It means reptile, literally. It's the little, what we would call a chameleon, a little green lizard that can change colors to blend in. It's what we call the gecko. This is this little guy who speaks Australian and represents gecko insurance. He's in the Bible, okay? He doesn't like being a rock star, but here he is. An example to us of someone who's extremely wise. The lizard you can take in your hand, yet it is in King's palaces. Now the riddle in this is, why is he mentioned among the others? I mean, we can see the ants and their cooperation in the industry, their planning. We can see the discretion and the wisdom and the caution of the rock badge. We can see the focus and the unity and the purposefulness of the locus, but why does this little fella make it into the fore? He lives in a King's palace because he's the King's pet, no. These little things are hard to catch. You could hold him in your hand if you could get a hold of him. And why does the King permit him in the palace? I'm sure the Queen of the House said to her husband, get rid of those things. Now he's there for one reason. His job, he eats insects. This is the days before air conditioning in windows, fly paper and bug spray. In the streets of Jerusalem, they didn't have the DDT trucks go down and fogged the neighborhood and kill all the mosquitoes. No, this little gecko did that. And the more the King tolerated them, the less bugs he saw. Now let me ask you a question. Praise God reincarnation is not true, but if it were, would you come back as a lizard who eats bugs in a King's palace? What a lonely way to make a living. And how important he really is, and keeping disease and infestation away from the people who live in the house that he shares with him. This guy is in the group because of the humble nature of his work, kind of like a garbage man in our society. Nobody wants to do that job unless they're five year old boys who are fascinated with the truck. But what happens if the garbage man goes on strike? What happens? Disease, rats, insects, who to faction, all of these things spread and everybody is threatened because that humble, a basing little work, is not performed. Sometimes people will say to me, you know, pastor, I don't do anything really important. I just drive a truck, oh really? What would happen if all of the truck drivers decided just for one week, now listen to me, one week to go on strike. You know how fast a supermarket runs out of food? Four days because the truck drivers don't get things there. What would happen if all the garbage men went on strike for just one week? All the policemen decided they were just not going to go to work, not going to give out tickets, not going to answer calls, not going to arrest criminals, imagine the NR key. All these low-paying jobs that we tend to not want to do how important they really are. Why? Because they serve the king. There is the climax of the parable, that's why it's in there. Regardless of what your work is, it is important if it does two things. If it serves the purposes of Christ the King and is a blessing to other people, I can think of no more lowly and embarrassing work than that. How many of you would like to mount up on a cross naked, full of shame and guilt? You'd be punished for things you did not do, but that is the work of God. That is the greatest of all works and adds value to everything we do. So here are four little creatures that solve the riddle for us. Anything we do that is a benefit to other people is an act of God's common grace. And everything we do can be done for the glory of Jesus Christ which gives our work infinite and eternal worth and value. In his wonderful book, I read a lot of books about work. Most of them, quite frankly, are boring and trite. There's one that is stellar. It's Timothy Keller's book called Every Good and Devar Adding Your Work to God's Work. In that book, he says, when we learn to value all people's work and all kinds of work, we're moving into a realm of Christian theology called common grace. Every advancement in learning, every work of art, every innovation in healthcare or technology or management or governance is simply God opening his book of creation and revealing his truth to us. So through his common grace, God blesses all people so that Christians can benefit from and cooperate with non-Christians. Without an understanding of common grace, Christians will believe they can all live self-sufficiently within their own cultural enclave. Without an understanding of common grace, Christians will have trouble understanding why certain non-Christians often exceed Christians both in their morality and in their wisdom and in their public work. But our view of common grace will remind us that even explicitly non-Christian work and non-Christian culture will always have some witness of God's truth in it. Because Christians are never as good as their right beliefs should make them think. And non-Christians are never as bad as their wrong beliefs should make them. We will adopt a stance of critical enjoyment, of human culture and its expressions in every field of work because we understand common grace. That's something most of us don't think about. That because we know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior because we believe in the Bible because we know a lot more about theology and ethics and scripture than other people, we tend to think we're better than they are but that's simply not true. And there are people who don't know Jesus Christ, couldn't tell you where Genesis or Revelation was in the Bible and lead in moral lives but do great good for people under God's common grace. We are never as good as our theology and unbelievers are never as bad as their ignorance because they work and God works through them. And even though that work will not earn their maternal life as the cross will, it is something that they do for the benefit of other people and even as unbelievers often for the pleasure of God. I want to take these next six minutes and give you the ten commandments of work. To fund a listen to these little animals, now we get to what the story is really about. Ten things you need to know about you work here is commandment number one. We were all created by the creator to share in his work of improving the creation. That's clear from Genesis one and two. Let us make man an hour in image, let them rule over the creation and subdue it. He placed us in the garden to tend it and keep it and gave us a help mate for our work. So when we work, we are doing God's work alongside of him. Two, our work must match up to and reflect the storyline of God's great story of the gospel. Our work falls within this storyline of creation, fall, redemption, and glory. You and I weren't there at the creation and we're not at the glory yet. We live in the fallen world that is being made new by God Himself and our work is part of God's instrument and making all things new. God is working through our work more than we ever realize. Commandment number three, work always has as its orientation these three goals. The pleasure of God, the honor of Christ, and the good of all mankind. Timothy Keller writes in his book, as an extension of God's creative work, the Christian labor has as its orientation God Himself. And we must ask him how our work can be done distinctly and for his glory. As an extension of God's providential work, our labor has as its orientation as well, the good of our neighbor. And we must ask them how we can do our work in such a way that we will increase their good. This latter motivation of helping other people is open to all men, even unbelievers. So our orientation as Christians is to please God and honor Christ and along with all mankind to help other people and that makes our work good. Paul tells Titus to teach the people to engage in good works for these things are good and profitable for all mankind. Commandment number four, God works in His creation primarily by working through people like you and me. Martin Luther has a wonderful way of explaining this. He says that we are the mask that God wears when He wants to work in the world. When God wants to feed people, He puts on the mask of a farmer and through the farmer He does His work. When He wants to heal people, He puts on the mask of a physician or a nurse or dentist and He works through them. When He wants to rule mankind to give them order and decency, He puts on the max of a politician, a magistrate, a governor. Whatever we do, where we can see God working through us, it is good work. If our work is something that we could not imagine God hiding behind, then it's not a work fit for anyone, let alone a Christian. When God wants to keep things clean, He puts on the mask of a trash man. Who wants to deliver goods and services, He gets an attractor, trailer rig and drives through you. He wants to raise children who know Him and will be good for the future of mankind. He puts them in your lap as a wife and a mother and your work is to wear the mask of God and teach them how to see God in all things. God is always working through us. In fact, His providence is normally accomplished through other people. Number five, the value of work is in serving God by serving the community. Christy Sayers says, the only true way of serving the community is to be truly in sympathy with the community and to be oneself a vital part of that community and then to serve the work without giving the community any other thought. Then the work will endure because it will be true to itself. It is the work that serves the community and the business of the worker is to do His work. And then the community is blessed. This is part of their great commandment to love God with all of your being and love your neighbors yourself. How do you practically do that day in a day out through your work? You're serving other people. Number six, because of common grace, God can and does perform some of His good work through unbelievers as well as believers. John Calvin acknowledged that the brilliance and the skill and the philanthropy of unconverted than give evidence that they are both the nature of God, the image of God, and that they have working through them, God's common grace. They are able to do what they do because the Holy Spirit works through them in some ways even though redemptively He may not be working in them. Commandment number seven, our work is the primary and most effective way to engage the world in its fallenness and to help people see Jesus Christ. Tim Keller writes, the gospel reminds us that God cares about the products we make, the company we work for and the customers we serve. He not only loves us, but also loves the world and wants to serve it well. My work is a critical way in which God is caring for human beings and renewing His world. But listen folks, your primary pulpit is not here. This is my work. Your pulpit is where you work, where people can admire you as a worker, as a colleague, as a friend, as a good neighbor, and then say, Ed, what makes you what you are? And you tell them how the work of Jesus Christ has made your work a sacred calling and something you do because you love them in Jesus name. Number eight, integrating faith in work is the Christian way to live. Dorothy Sarah says in her book, Crete or Chaos, that work is not something we do in order to live. That is consumerism. Work is something we live to do. That is a calling. You say pastor, you don't know the work I am called to do, but I know what Paul says, whatever you do, do your work hardly for the Lord and not for men. Knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of your inheritance because it is the Lord Christ whom you serve. Every job has drudgery as a part of it. I once had a fellow say to me, you know, I wish I had a job like yours. It was always interesting and fun. And I said, what rock did you crawl out from under recently? Every work is difficult in this fallen world, but I will tell you when you know you are doing the right work, when it is what you get up for every morning and it energizes you. When you go to bed at night you can't wait to the next day you get to do the next thing in your work. I have been preaching for 31 years and I would truly rather preach than eat. In fact, the only two things I would rather do than preach is to be with my wife, my family, watch the buck guys win, but some things are more important than preaching, aren't they? Now I live for this and you say, well, what if I will then change your job? You have the freedom to do that. Maybe less about what you paid, folks. Would you rather have a job that had a lot of money involved in it and you were miserable, or maybe a smaller house and a simpler car and less financial security, but you got up every morning energized about what you did? Would you rather have a calling than a career? Number nine. The pleasure you find in work is an act of worship to God. Whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. You say, how can I glorify God when I'm not even thinking about Him? It works in the way you find pleasure and purpose and what you do. When you are happy with your work, you have a sense that you're doing something important, you're helping other people. That gives God pleasure. That gives Him glory, which is the ultimate end of anything we do, the chief end of man. Number ten, finally, the one thing we share with every other human being is work. Therefore our work alongside them, in complement to them and in service to them, is the common ground of common grace that leads to a common salvation. Listen to Paul write to Timothy about the simple mundane things of life. First of all, I urge you that supplications and prayers, intercession and thanks-givings be made for all, especially for kings and those who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life full of godliness and dignity in every way. For this is good and is pleasing inside of God our Savior who desires all people to be saved. And to come to the knowledge of the truth. This is pleasing in the sight of our God and Savior that we work with all quietness and godliness and dignity because it sets the stage for the greater work of the cross. Your common work, grounded in God's common grace, aimed at the common good of other people, is truly worth something for which you can spend your whole life with honor. Ants do it, badgers and locusts and lizards do, angels and men do. God does. The whole creation works because God is working. That's what Jesus Christ said. I must do my work because even now my father is working in you. Thank God for our jobs and for the opportunities we have to express our common grace and our common humanity with people that may lead to a common salvation. Let's pray. Father, we do ask your forgiveness this morning. For all the times we grumble about our work. It is hard at times and it's monotonous at times and even frustratingly painful at other times. And yet, what if we were unable to work? What if you had made us in such a way that we simply existed and we did not get to share in the great calling this cultural mandate to shape the raw and beautiful resources of your creation into something good and noble in life to work alongside other people for common mankind and with your Holy Spirit working in us to do a pro-creative and an improving work upon what you have given us. Fill us with your grace, give us Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Do your work in us this morning by leading us to repentance and faith so that we might rise up tomorrow morning as new men and women looking at our jobs from a new perspective as a calling to ministry an opportunity to witness and to worship and to work for your good pleasure. And give us, as the Psalmist says, give us the opportunity to see the works of our hands and confirm the work of our hands in our day that we might find this pleasure and fulfillment, sense of accomplishment and who we are on what we do which will read down to your glory and pleasure as you are pleased with our pleasure. Do all of this we pray through the grace you give men kind and especially through the saving grace of Jesus Christ to lift us from work to a calling and to use that calling for the glory of many sons and daughters and eternity to come. Do all of this we pray and ask for Jesus' sake and in His name, amen.